Chapter 5
HAYES
The perimeter alarm goes off at oh-three-hundred on day eight.
I'm out of bed, boots on, sidearm drawn in under twelve seconds.
The alert on my phone shows sensor trip on the northeast quadrant, two hundred meters from Lex's cabin.
Could be wildlife. Deer trip the sensors every few weeks, and last month a black bear set off the entire north grid and gave Sully a heart attack.
But the timing is wrong. Deer move at dawn and dusk. Bears are still in their dens in March.
I'm out my door and moving through the tree line before Sully's confirmation text comes through. Two heat signatures. Human. Moving southeast toward guest cabins. Deck and Mace mobilizing.
My blood goes cold and focused at the same time. I cut through the pines on a line toward Lex's cabin, staying off the gravel path, moving on the soft pine needle ground the way Wolfe taught me. Silent. Fast.
Her cabin is dark. Good. She's asleep, or at least she was before the alarm. I clear the perimeter in a sweep, check the tree line, and position myself between her front door and the direction the intruders are approaching from.
My earpiece crackles. Deck's voice, low and hard. "Hayes, status."
"On Lex's position. Holding."
"Copy. Mace is flanking north. I'm coming from the west. Sully has them on thermal. They've stopped moving. Two hundred meters northeast, just inside the tree line."
"Rules of engagement?"
"Observe and contain. If they advance on the cabins, neutralize."
I press my back against the cabin wall and watch the dark tree line.
My breathing is controlled. My hands are steady on the Glock.
This is what I trained for. This is what twelve years of Pararescue built into my nervous system.
The fear is there, but it lives underneath the training, fuel for the engine, not in the driver's seat.
Three minutes pass. Then Deck's voice again. "Contact. Two males, tactical gear, night vision. They're pulling back. Mace cut off their exit route. Converging now."
Sounds of movement through the trees. A shout. The crack of something that might be a branch or might be a bone. Then Mace's voice, calm as always: "Two in custody. Alive. Zip-tied. They had a long-range camera and a signal scanner."
Surveillance team. Not a hit squad. Recon. Someone sent people to map our security and locate Lex's position.
"Copy," I say. "Holding on the principal until compound is cleared."
I stay on her door for another forty minutes while Deck and Mace process the intruders and Sully sweeps the entire perimeter grid for additional contacts. When the all-clear comes, the sky is starting to lighten at the edges, gray dawn creeping over the eastern ridge.
Her door opens behind me.
Lex stands in the doorway in a white t-shirt that falls to mid-thigh and nothing else. Her hair is loose, platinum strands messed from sleep, and her eyes are sharp despite the hour. She looks at me. At the gun in my hand. At the position I've taken against her wall.
"What happened?"
"Two intruders. Surveillance team. They're in custody. Compound is clear."
"How long have you been standing here?"
"About forty-five minutes."
Her gaze drops to my bare forearms. I left my cabin without a jacket. The March mountain air is close to freezing at this hour, and I can see my own breath. I didn't notice the cold until now.
"Come inside," she says.
"I should debrief with Deck."
"You're freezing. Come inside."
She steps back from the door, and I holster the Glock and follow her in because the debrief can wait and she's standing in her kitchen in a white t-shirt with her legs bare and I just spent forty-five minutes in the dark thinking about what I'd do if someone got to her before I did.
The answer was nothing good. The answer involved a level of violence I haven't accessed since my last combat deployment, and it had nothing to do with professionalism and everything to do with the woman standing three feet from me, backlit by the kitchen light, looking at me with an expression I've never seen on her face before.
Fear. Not of the intruders. Of something closer.
She makes coffee. Her hands are steady on the kettle, steady on the mugs, steady on the sugar. Two sugars, black, because even at oh-four-hundred under threat, Alexandra Morrison maintains her habits. She sets my mug on the counter and wraps both hands around hers.
"They were here for me," she says.
"They were scouting. Mapping our layout, trying to locate your specific position. They weren't equipped for extraction."
"Yet."
"Yet," I agree. "Which means whoever sent them is escalating. This isn't Whitfield acting alone anymore. This is organized, funded, and it just went operational."
She nods. Processing. Running the data. Then she looks up at me, and the CEO is gone. The woman underneath, the one I've been catching glimpses of for eight days, is right there on the surface.
"You were outside my door for forty-five minutes. In the cold. With a gun."
"That's the job."
"Stop saying that."
"Saying what?"
"That everything you do for me is the job. The coffee order. The mountain. Standing outside my door at three in the morning in freezing temperatures." She sets her mug down. "Is it the job, Hayes? All of it?"
The kitchen is quiet. Early dawn light filters through the curtains, turning everything soft gray.
She's standing across the counter from me, and the white t-shirt is thin enough that I can see the shape of her body underneath it, the curve of her breasts, the shadow of her nipples against the fabric, the dip of her waist. Her legs are long and bare and she's not wearing anything underneath and I know this because the t-shirt clings to her hips and there are no lines.
"No," I say. "It's not all the job."
She comes around the counter. Barefoot on the wood floor, the hem of the shirt shifting against her thighs.
She stops in front of me. Close. The same distance as the mountain, as the wall in the kitchen two nights ago.
Close enough that the warmth of her body pushes back the cold still clinging to my skin.
"Good," she says.
She reaches up and grips the front of my shirt. Pulls me down to her.
This kiss is different from the one in the kitchen. That one was discovery. This one is a decision. Her mouth is hot, urgent, tasting like coffee and want, and she kisses me with the precision of a woman who has decided to stop thinking and start taking.
I pull her against me. Both hands on her waist, fingers digging into the soft cotton, lifting her into me.
She gasps against my mouth when our bodies align, and I swallow the sound and give her one back, a groan that comes from somewhere deep in my chest when her hips roll against mine and I feel the heat of her through my tactical pants.
Her hands push under my shirt. Her palms are warm against my bare stomach, and my muscles jump under her touch.
She pushes the shirt up and I break the kiss long enough to pull it over my head.
Her eyes drop to my chest. My shoulders.
The PJ motto tattooed along my ribs. Her fingers trace the ink, and her touch is so light it borders on surgical.
"These things I will do," she reads softly. The Pararescue creed.
"That others may live." I finish it. My voice is wrecked. "Lex."
"I know." She pulls the t-shirt over her head.
The world stops.
She's naked underneath. Completely. Full breasts with dusky pink nipples already tight from the cold or from wanting or from both. A stomach that's soft, not flat, real. Hips that flare into curves that make my hands ache. A thatch of trimmed blonde hair between her thighs.
She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.
She watches me look at her. I can see the flicker of vulnerability, the instinct to cover herself, the awareness of every year between us. She doesn't cover herself. She stands there, chin lifted, shoulders back, naked in her kitchen at dawn, and lets me see her.
I close the distance. Cup her face in both hands. Kiss her forehead. Her temple. The fine lines at the corner of her eye that she thinks make her look old and I think make her look lived-in and extraordinary.
"You're stunning," I tell her, and my voice cracks on the word.
Her breath shudders out. She pulls me back to her mouth and the kiss goes nuclear.
I lift her. Her legs wrap around my waist, and the hot center of her presses against my stomach, wet and scorching through the fabric.
I carry her to the bed in four strides. Lay her down on the white comforter and look at her spread out beneath me, platinum hair fanned across the pillow, bare skin flushed pink, blue eyes almost black with want.
I kneel between her thighs. She reaches for my belt and I catch her wrists. Press them gently into the mattress above her head.
"Not yet." I lower my mouth to her throat.
Taste the salt of her skin, the perfume that's faded overnight into something warmer and more honest. I work my way down.
Her collarbone. The slope of her breast. I close my mouth over her left nipple and suck, and her back arches off the bed with a sound that's close to a sob.
I take my time. One breast, then the other. Tongue circling each nipple, teeth grazing the sensitive peak until she's writhing beneath me, her freed hands gripping my hair, pulling me closer. I kiss down her stomach. Feel it tense and soften under my mouth. Press my lips to the swell of her hip.
Her thighs open for me and I settle between them. The scent of her arousal is warm, musky, intoxicating. I press my mouth against her inner thigh and she jerks.
"Hayes."
"I've got you."
I spread her open with my thumbs and drag my tongue in a flat, slow stroke up the length of her pussy. She moans. Not the controlled, careful sounds she's been letting slip for days. A full, throaty moan that fills the cabin and goes straight to my cock, so hard now it's painful against my zipper.